I've never understood the "Joss is God" attitude.

BtVS was a collective effort. So much so that I find it troubling to analyse the show trying to get to the vision "beneath", since there's no single vision, there's a whole bunch of them.

However, Whedon was the general. The leader. The dude who okayed stuff. As such, that's where my praise and recrimination goes, generally speaking.

Now, S6 and S7 are my less liked seasons, but I don't blame Noxon. As far as I know she did what Whedon wanted her to do. I'm not going to praise Whedon for Once More With Feeling and say everything else about the season is Noxon's responsibility.

But apparently there seems to be an aura around Whedon, one of doing everything right, with blame for problems falling on other people, be they TV executives, other writers, unappreciative audience, at least for some people.

And while I think any writer would've taken flak in Marti's position, it was probably worse because she's a woman. At least I've seen venomous, sexist speech directed at her, and very rarely have I seen sexist speech directed at Whedon.